Damon Gameau & Clare Bowditch On How To Change The World

Join us for a unique film premiere and School of Life experience with Damon Gameau’s 2040 and a fact-based dreaming journey of what the world could be if we actively engage with the power of positive storytelling.

Drawing on the world’s best minds across economics, climate, politics, technology, food supply and design, and in consultation with children all over the world, Director and Actor Damon Gameau (director of That Sugar Film) has now created 2040; a rich visual experience animating a positive vision of what the future of our lives and our planet could be, combined with an intimate letter to a daughter from her father.

As individuals, we are constantly told to create goals, to ‘dream big’ and envision a positive future for ourselves. As a collective though, despite our desire to believe that change is possible on a global scale, many of us feel a paralysis about the big issues we are faced with today, and that they will inevitably lead us to the dystopian narratives which occupy so many films and tv series. The lack of positive storytelling does little to inspire action.

When we look over history, we are reminded of how constant change is; new ways to govern nations were pioneered, ideas on how to dress and who to worship were transformed. The world is indeed being made and remade in every instant. How do we reconnect ourselves to the reality that we are part of the same ongoing turbulent narrative, and that the future is just as malleable to be shaped positively? How do we muster the attitude and momentum to trigger in ourselves the modesty, patience, rigour and collaboration we require to shift from being bystanders to contributors?

This unique School of Life film premiere experience with Damon Gameau, and a conversation to follow hosted by Clare Bowditch, will reveal a positive vision for our future and remove the paralysis many of us feel about global issues, freeing us to make changes that will shift the course for humanity.

'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.'

- Buckminster Fuller

About Damon Gameau

Damon Gameau is an Australian actor and director. He has starred in several feature films, including Rolf De Heer’s critically acclaimed The Tracker, Darren Ashton’s Thunderstruck and Razzle Dazzle, Robert Connolly’s Balibo opposite Anthony LaPaglia, Patrick with Rachel Griffiths and Charles Dance and Save Your Legs! with Stephen Curry and Brendan Cowell. Damon’s performance in Balibo earned him an AFI Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His television credits include Underbelly, Howzat, Love My Way, Puberty Blues,Secrets and Lies, Gallipoli and The Kettering Incident. As a director he wrote, directed and performed vocals for the 2011 winning Tropfest short film, Animal Beatbox, which has now played at over 25 festivals worldwide. He was also a finalist in 2010 with his film, One, which he co-directed with Gareth Davies. That Sugar Film was Damon’s first feature length film as a director and won Best Documentary at the Australian AACTA awards and was a hit at the Australian box office. That Sugar Book is his first published book.

Award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream. Structured as a visual letter to his 4-year-old daughter, Damon blends traditional documentary with dramatised sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision board of how these solutions could regenerate the world for future generations.

Presented by Screen Australia, 2040 is a GoodThing Productions and Regen Productions Film, in association with Shark Island Institute, Good Pitch Australia, Diamond Docs and Film Victoria.

About Clare Bowditch

Clare Bowditch is a musician, broadcaster, sometimes actor, speaker, entrepreneur, and soon to be a published author. She has won the coveted ARIA Award for Best Female for her music, the Rolling Stone Woman of the Year Award for her contribution to Australian culture, and has been nominated for a Logie Award for her role as Rosanna on popular television show Offspring. In music, she has toured and performed at every festival, venue and truck-stop Australia has to offer and played with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, Gotye and John Butler, to name just a few.

In 2012, suspecting the future of business lay in harnessing creative talent and cultivating empathy, she crowd-funded the enterprise Big-Hearted Business, an educational resource reminding the world of the R.O.I. of “giving a shit". Having now retired from her career as a beloved broadcaster on ABC Radio interviewing many of the greats, she has now finished recording her eighth album, which will be released via Universal Music with the first single “Woman” a great provocation and call to arms. And she will release her first non-fiction book – a partial memoir - with Allen and Unwin in late 2019.

About Special Events

Leading writers, economists, historians, philosophers, psychologists, artists and other thinkers offer provocation, inspiration and consolation in the form of advice for living better. Speakers for this strand have been invited by The School of Life to present their own material. Session formats will vary depending on the subject.

Buy tickets forDamon Gameau & Clare Bowditch On How To Change The World

This website uses cookies to give you the best possible experience. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. For more information you can read our Privacy Policy here.